Select Your Keywords
Keywords are the words an advertiser uses to trigger the showing of their pay per click (PPC) ad. When somebody types one of your keywords into the search engine, your ad will be shown. If your pay per click ad is displayed on a website network, your ad will be shown when a web page in the network has your keywords on the page.
Keyword Overview
- Review your website and harvest the keywords. Include unique numbers or IDs for your products/services.
- How does your product/service differ from the competition? What features set you apart?
- Consider your potential customers. How would they search for your product/service?
- Do not forget about keyword variations. These include singular/plural versions, misspellings, abbreviations and acronyms.
Consider the product or service you are trying to sell. Do you sell it locally, by region, nationally, or internationally? You may want to target your pay per click campaign in the geographic location in which you operate. When choosing your keywords, carefully consider all aspects of your product/service. Generate a list of keywords based on words defining your product, your location, what your product is used for, etc. Carefully consider what terms users are likely to use in searching for your product/service. First-time pay per click advertisers often misunderstand this point. It is more important to use the keywords your potential and current customers use than the ones you and your organization use to describe your product/service.
First-time pay per click advertisers often misunderstand this point. It is more important to use the keywords your potential and current customers use than the ones you and your organization use to describe your product/service.
For example, do you sell widgets or blue widgets specifically? If you are the ACME Widget Company and you sell blue widgets your pay per click keyword list would include the following:
- ACME Widget
- ACME Widgets
- ACME blue widget
- ACME blue widgets
- Blue widget
- Blue widgets
This list is only a partial representation of potential keywords. It is important to include both singular and plural versions of keywords, as well as any other additional variations that may be made. The more precise your keywords, the more effective your pay per click ad will be in reaching your desired audience. After you have created an initial list of keywords, ask yourself if your product/service needs to be localized. In other words, do you want to or have to run your pay per click ads relative to a region? Let’s say our example company, ACME Widget Company can only ship its blue widgets to the Charlotte, NC area. In this example, the advertiser does not want to waste money on generating clicks with people in Colorado. So the keyword list would resemble the following:
- ACME Widget, Charlotte
- ACME Widgets, Charlotte
- ACME blue widget, Charlotte
- ACME blue widgets, Charlotte
- Blue widget, Charlotte
- Blue widgets, Charlotte
Other Methods To Find Keywords
- Go to the website of one of your competitors and find the pages where their products/services best match yours. Landing pages are generally your best bet. Click on View Source in your web browser and check the META tags for keywords.
- Given the lessened impact of META keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), lots of webmasters no longer use them. However, you can still filter the content on their page to harvest keywords. Use Google's Keyword Tool and click on the tab for Site-Related Keywords. Just enter the URL of the page you want to pull keywords from and the tool will return a list of keywords used most often.
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